


after the exile

by tryslora



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, Derek's an asshole, First Kiss, Jackson Comes Back, Jackson's an asshole, M/M, Minor Danny Mahealani/Stiles Stilinski, Post S3, Scents & Smells, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 12:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13704105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: Jackson has full access to his money, and his independence. It's time to go back to Beacon Hills, even if his alpha sent him into exile in the first place.





	after the exile

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for prompt #263 - Bitter at Fullmoon Ficlet. For some reason, the first person I thought of for that prompt was Jackson, and the first situation was his leaving for London. Plus, I just wanted to do some Halemore.

He was exiled.

There’s no easy way to put it, no better way to explain what happened. When all was said and done, Derek said go and Jackson went. His alpha didn’t give him a choice, his parents didn’t give him a choice.

He’s not bitter about it, though.

Why should he be bitter? He’s only spent the last five years in London, waiting for the moment when he gets full, unfettered access to his trust fund. Waiting for his twenty-first birthday.

And now that it’s happened, now that he has money and independence?

It’s time to go back.

#

Jackson grabs his bag and disembarks as soon as they open the doors for first class. The plane was stifling, an affront to his senses, and he can’t wait to get away from crush of people. He reaches the end of the jetway and inhales roughly; the air in the airport is stale, but it’s better than the plane, laden with cinnamon and coffee, rich steak, and hot buffalo wings.

And… wait. That scent is familiar….

He turns, gaze narrowing. “How did you get past security?”

“I’m charming,” Derek says dryly. “I’m surprised that’s the first question you’re asking.”

“Danny,” Jackson spits back at him. “He told you I was coming.”

“Actually, Danny told Stiles, who told Scott, who told me. Danny and Stiles were pissed off that he let it slip,” Derek counters. He pushes away from the counter he’s been leaning against. “I don’t think that’s really what you want to know, either.”

Jackson’s jaw is tight, teeth grating against each other as he clenches. He turns away, heads for the exit without another word.

“Do you have any checked bags?” Derek keeps pace with him, staying close as Jackson veers toward the sliding doors. “I’ll take that as a no.”

Jackson pauses outside, hitches his bag up his shoulder as it slides down. “No, I don’t have checked bags; they’ll be shipped. I don’t need a ride. I don’t need a place to stay. Everything’s been arranged.”

“I’m aware,” Derek says. “There’ve been some changes to your plans.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” The bag falls from Jackson’s shoulder, lands on the sidewalk with a soft thunk. “It’s been five years, Derek. I’m an adult. You don’t control me, and you can’t tell me what to do.”

Derek steps in closer, close enough that when Jackson inhales, all he smells is Derek and alpha and pack. Another step, and Jackson has to tilt his head back, chin up, neck bared as he refuses to look away from Derek’s steady gaze.

Derek touches his neck, and Jackson doesn’t move, even when Derek’s fingers curl around to the back of his neck, fingertips touching the knobs of his spine.

“It’s been five years.” Derek’s breath is a warm whisper across Jackson’s skin. “I made a mistake telling them to take you away. I made a mistake separating you from your pack.”

He’s gone then, several steps back, far enough that Jackson can inhale without tasting only him on the air. “If this is your way of making it up to me,” Jackson says dryly, “your planning could use improvement.”

“You’re not the only one to tell me that.” Derek picks up the bag before Jackson can, heads for the crosswalk where a small knot of pedestrians wait for for traffic to pause for safe crossing. “But I’m stubborn, and I figured this way I get an hour of you stuck in my car in order to apologize.”

“Did it ever occur to you to just ask?” Jackson catches up to him, but Derek’s legs are longer, his stride steadily just out of reach for Jackson to meet without hurrying. “Because if this is meant to be some kind of pleasant surprise, it isn’t.”

“You hate me.” As they reach the other side, Derek veers left into the open lot rather than heading into the parking garage. “You weren’t going to accept me picking you up, you weren’t going to accept any overt offer of friendship.”

“I might have.”

“Danny was pretty clear,” Derek mutters. “So was Stiles. It’s good to see the two of you getting along.”

“He’s not a murderous rage-filled alpha bent on destroying Danny’s pack, nor does he cheat on him constantly.” Jackson shrugs one shoulder. “Danny’s done a lot worse. I figure Stiles is a better choice than most Danny’s made.”

Derek stows Jackson’s bag, holds open the passenger door to a newer model sleek black Camaro than the one Jackson remembers.

“Get in.”

Jackson bites back all the bitter words, swallows against the anger. He feels the knotted muscle in his jaw working, tight with frustration. “Ask,” he bites out.

A flash of remorse mixed with irritation in Derek’s scent. “There’s a car waiting at my place; Danny picked it up for you yesterday,” Derek says quietly. “I’m not taking away your independence while you’re here. But you’re pack. You shouldn’t have to drive by yourself, you shouldn’t have to stay in a hotel. The whole point of coming home is to come home, right?”

“Ask,” Jackson repeats.

“Please get in the car, Jackson. The pack’s coming over for dinner tonight.”

It’s not a question. It’s still an order, even if it’s a politely worded one. But Jackson thinks it’s the best he’s going to get. He ducks past Derek, slides into the leather seat and leans back. He gets the belt clipped and closes his eyes as Derek gets into the driver’s seat.

“I don’t want to be trapped into some kind of hour long apology,” he says. “I’ve been flying since yesterday to get here, and I’m going to take a nap.”

The Camaro roars to life; Derek revs it with the touch of his foot to the gas. “Sleep,” he says. “The pack’s looking forward to seeing you tonight.”

#

Lydia jumps into Jackson’s arms as soon as he climbs out of the car. He grabs her on reflex, buries his face against her throat and inhales as she squeals his name. She’s familiar. Comforting. Claws tip his fingers, poking through the fabric of her dress as he holds on, and he wills them back.

The world is blurry when he looks at her, setting her down carefully. She frames his face, kisses his lips briefly before she rubs at his cheek with her thumb, the scent of salt in the air. “I might almost think you’re happy to be home,” she says.

“I missed you.” It’s heartfelt and honest. True. She was his other half, the piece that kept him whole, for so damned long. Giving her up was the right thing to do, but at the same time, a piece of him aches for what might have been. He’s glad they started talking again, that they were able to reconnect long distance. “Is your boyfriend going to rip my head off because you kissed me?”

“My _fiancé_ is easy-going and has already been told that you’re no threat.” Lydia pats his cheek, steps back to make room for Danny and Stiles to catch Jackson and pull him into a shared hug. “You’ll meet him when you meet the rest of the new pack members.”

Things have changed a lot in five years. People that Jackson remembers are now dead, new people have been absorbed into the pack. He’s been hearing about it from Danny—and Stiles added a handy photo identification cheat sheet as soon as Jackson made plans to come home. He’s been studying.

Not that he thinks he’ll fit into this pack. Not that he expects them to make a space for the exile returning home.

He can hope, however.

Derek walks away carrying Jackson’s bag before Danny releases Jackson. “I’m sorry,” Danny says.

“He’s your alpha. He makes orders, you follow them,” Jackson mutters. “It’s fine. I slept the whole way here. Which is good, because I wasn’t in the mood to deal with him getting whatever guilt he has off his chest. It’s about five years too late.”

“Let’s just go meet the rest of the pack.” Stiles pats his shoulder. “Did you study on the flight? Because it’s quiz time.”

It’s not as bad as Jackson expects. Liam growls at him when Hayden offers a hug, and Brett smells silently amused while Lori outright snickers. Kira bounces cheerily; her hug feels like a quick spike of power over his skin, the shivering aftermath of a storm. Mason smells like sweet musky interest, and Jackson’s almost tempted to return it, but Liam growls at him all over again. Jackson’s not bored enough to make it worth it. Jordan’s just as easy-going as Lydia said, thumping Jackson on the back, then dropping into a seat and pulling Lydia onto his lap.

Malia is the one who irritates him the most, getting close enough to inhale his scent, then backing off with a low growl.

“Malia, what did we say about our friends?” Stiles asks from where he sits by the fire, sharing a chair with Danny.

“Isaac told me he’s an asshole,” Malia says sharply. “He smells like one.”

“You can’t smell someone’s personality,” Stiles says patiently.

Malia smirks. “You can’t. I can.”

“Malia.” Derek’s voice is low. Firm. He doesn’t have Jackson’s bag anymore, and Jackson is afraid to ask where it’s gone. The house is huge, as if Derek rebuilt the old Hale house and tripled it in size.

Malia backs down, retreats to where Scott and Kira sit. She folds her legs, ends up on the floor with her head pillowed on Kira’s knee. “Fine,” she mutters.

“We’re glad to have you back,” Scott says, and Jackson smells it then. That subtle, quiet scent of something that makes him want to submit. To show his throat and beg to be pack. It’s not as strong from Scott as it is from Derek, but it’s still there. It seems strange to think of him as an alpha, no matter what Danny and Stiles said, but Jackson can’t deny the evidence of his own nose.

“Pizza’s in the kitchen,” Derek says. “Melissa, Chris, and Noah will be here later, so leave some for them.”

“The spinach pizza is for my dad.”

“Dude.” Scott knocks into Stiles as they jockey to get through the door first. “Your dad hates spinach pizza.”

“But he needs his vegetables! And iron,” Stiles protests.

Jackson hangs back, until it’s just him and Danny left in the living room. Danny claps him on the shoulder, reels him in for another hard hug. “I’ll give you a tour of the house later, give you a chance to get away from Derek.”

“He lives here, too. It’s not like I can avoid him.”

Danny grins. “You’d be surprised in a place this big. It’s a pack house. We all have our own spaces, those of us who live here anyway. We’ve got the gathering spaces, like this one, but if we want to get away, we can do that, too. Derek grew up with no privacy; he tried to build some into this place.”

It’s still odd hearing Derek’s name trip from Danny’s tongue like a best friend. Or an alpha. Jackson’s jaw goes tight again, and he lurches forward when Danny pats his back. “Come on. Everything’ll be easier after some pizza and beer.”

#

Stiles and Danny are the ones who show Jackson to his room after everything’s done. Not just a room—a full suite with two bedrooms, a small sitting room, en suite bath, and even a tiny kitchenette. Jackson realizes that he doesn’t have to leave if he doesn’t want to, that he could just stay right here.

It’s better than any hotel.

Stiles and Danny leave him there, head for their own suite somewhere else in the house (one wing over, two floors up; Jackson boggles at the size of this house). He’d been going to start apartment hunting, but it seems like he doesn’t need to.

He might not want to take orders from Derek, but he’s also not going to refuse this kind of free housing.

It takes time to fall asleep in the strange bed that smells mostly like nothing in particular, but a little like home. When he wakes into the dawn light, the covers are pulled free and his pillow is on the floor, and he sleeps across the bed with one leg hanging off.

He feels anxious, pressure skittering under his skin. It’s worse than it was living in London.

Here, at least, he can run. He pulls out a pair of shorts, his running shoes, and doesn’t bother with a shirt. It’s not hot out yet, but he’ll heat up quickly enough once he gets moving. He doesn’t plan to make it easy on himself.

Jackson has no idea how to get to the front of the house and the main door, but he does have a sliding glass door in his sitting room that leads out to a small deck. He steps out and climbs onto the railing, looking at the ground below. He’s one floor up, which is nothing to a werewolf.

He leaps out and somersaults before landing in a crouch on the ground.

It took his parents months before they figured out he was sneaking out of their flat in London just like this, and that one was three floors up. Jackson would jump down from landing to landing, then climb up again later to get back in through his own window. He’s familiar with the process of escaping a building through unconventional means.

He only rests a moment before he leaps forward, racing flat out. There’s a long yard stretching behind the house—a pool to one side, a shed nearby—and the preserve itself butts up against the back. He bounds across the grass and is into the trees shortly, swerving to find a path that leads away from the house, well-traveled, the scent of pack heavy and lingering in the air.

They must run this way often. Probably every full moon at the least, if not more.

There are places where the path divides, and Jackson doesn’t think, simply takes the one that smells best to him. It gets better at every divide, as if he’s honing in on one particular sweet, musky scent.

He skids to a stop by the river when he recognizes it. When he can pick it out of the air, taste it on his tongue, and knows that it’s Derek’s scent. That he’s followed Derek’s favorite path.

Jackson sinks to the ground, damp and cold under his ass. He draws his knees up, loops his arms over them, and stares out at the river which crashes by below the bank. It’s narrow here, easy enough to run across if he wants. The rocks poke up as the river slides past them, creating tiny eddies around them, places for it to make noise and yell back at him. If he looks to the right, it’s slightly wider, narrowing rapidly into this pass. To the left is a dropoff, loud with a small waterfall, ending in a more placid wide pool.

Jackson inhales. Exhales slowly, closes his eyes as he leans back.

He’s missed this.

London was confining. It was beautiful, yes, and he wanted for nothing material. But it wasn’t _this_. Every brief flirtation, even his longest relationships, pale next to the scent of pack and Derek and the crash of water over rocks in the preserve.

Footsteps in the distance, but the scent on the breeze never changes. Jackson tenses, but doesn’t open his eyes as Derek approaches.

Derek stops next to him, crouches down.

“What?” Jackson mutters.

Derek sits. When Jackson glances over, Derek stretches out, lies back on the ground, arms behind his head, knees still bent.

“I fucked up,” Derek says.

Jackson makes a motion for him to go on.

“I was scared.”

The words come firmly, and Jackson wonders if Derek’s rehearsed it. He wonders how long Derek’s been practicing.

“No shit,” Jackson growls. “So was I.”

“I was young, so were you,” Derek says. “I didn’t know how to be an alpha and I fucked it up. I didn’t figure it out until after I wasn’t anymore.”

“You got it back.”

“Yeah, I did, thanks to some research and essentially rebooting myself back from start.” Derek licks his lips. “You went the lizard route before becoming a wolf. I got sent back to human before I could be an alpha again. I had to figure it all out from the beginning. How to handle my power, my shift. Finding an anchor that was something more than just being angry that my family was dead. How to be the adult that the pack needed, rather than another angry teenager.”

“You weren’t a teenager.” Jackson resents that, like it’s a copout. A stereotype that gives Derek some kind of excuse for what happened.

“I wasn’t much past it when everything started,” Derek tells him. “You were fifteen, almost sixteen then. I was twenty-one. One ID claimed I was twenty-five, some people thought I was still nineteen. But no, I was twenty-one, and my entire life had turned upside down when I was fifteen myself. I wasn’t prepared for what happened when I became an alpha at the same age you are now.”

“I wasn’t prepared for what happened when I became the kanima,” Jackson shoots back. “Or a fucking werewolf. You bit me and moved on. You didn’t even tell me you thought I was dying.”

Derek winces, drops one arm across his face. “That’s a fair point. I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you bother to email me? Or call. Or anything during the last five years.” That’s the worst of it. Why should Jackson listen to Derek now? He’s had plenty of time to make good before, and hasn’t bothered.

“I didn’t think you wanted to hear it.” Derek lowers his arm, looks at Jackson. “It’s not like you made contact, either.”

“You exiled me.” Jackson sits up, hunches over his bent knees again.

Derek snorts. “No, I suggested that your parents take you out of Beacon Hills. I never said you couldn’t come back.”

“But—” Jackson snaps his mouth shut, brows furrowing. “You didn’t want me here.”

“Not at first.” Derek’s muscles clench as he sits up, mirrors Jackson’s pose. “You were a sign of everything I’d failed at. I made bad choices. I bit four teenagers—one tried to kill us, two died. Isaac’s doing okay now. I talked to Danny a lot about you, after he came back to Beacon Hills.”

“That’s when you two got close.”

There’s a rich flood of embarrassment and regret in the air. “That’s one word for it. Don’t worry, I didn’t break his heart.”

“I know. Stiles stole him from you, and Danny said you were never really that into him anyway.” The conversation had both surprised Jackson and not. Jackson knew Danny had a thing for Stiles, but it had seemed like Derek and Danny were good. Right up until it was Danny and Stiles instead.

“Danny had a few pointed, blunt things to say about where my head was,” Derek admits. “But Danny’s like that. Nice guy, and perfectly willing to point out all the things you don’t want to look at.”

Jackson huffs. “Yeah. Like _Jackson, stop trying, I’m not into you. Find another guy._ ” He shrugs one shoulder. “So I did. And it wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t pack.”

Derek’s quiet, picking at some invisible thread on his basketball shorts.

Jackson glances over at him. “What?” The anger has passed, and it feels oddly comfortable here. Like he can let go of the bitterness and finally start to enjoy the idea of being home.

“ _Derek, stop talking about Jackson_ ,” Derek says, his tone dry. “I got that one a lot.”

Jackson arches one eyebrow. “Obsessed much?”

“My first beta. My biggest mistake.” Derek shrugs. “Does it matter any more? You’re here, you’re in the pack house where you fit in. The place smells right.”

Smells right.

Like Derek’s scent led him here.

Fuck.

There are two ways this could go. Jackson could forgive and forget, just get up and start running again like it’s nothing. Maybe run with Derek. Maybe end up with some other pack members joining them. Have breakfast, go on with life.

Or he could take a chance on the clear message here, which he’s pretty sure Danny’s been trying to get through his head.

“Fine,” Jackson says. “I forgive you, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

Jackson moves before Derek can react, sees the light flash red in his eyes as soon as Jackson straddles him, pushing his legs down, trapping him there. Jackson frames his face, his own eyes flashing in response to his alpha’s as he holds on and kisses him.

There’s a chance Derek wasn’t saying the same thing. There’s a possibility this is all going to go to shit right here.

But it doesn’t. Derek’s hands land on Jackson’s ass, claws digging in through his thin shorts, holding him in place as Derek kisses him back. Deep and rough, like they both need to drown in the other’s scent. Jackson’s panting at the end, takes a moment to catch his breath. Derek slides one hand up Jackson’s back, cradles him close, presses his face against his neck.

It feels good. Smells right.

“Your condition?” Derek murmurs, breath hot against Jackson’s skin.

“We talk about shit this time, and we do our damnedest not to fuck it up again,” Jackson tells him. “See, I’ve got a hard-on for this grouchy alpha. I did when I was a teenager, and I still do.”

“Yeah, well, there’s this asshole I think I’m into,” Derek mutters, nipping at Jackson’s skin. “The fuck of it is, no one else has measured up. You were just a kid. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

“No more sending me away if you think you’ve fucked up,” Jackson orders.

They seal the bargain with a kiss, and Jackson trusts that Danny will keep anyone else from following the path to the river. Which is a good thing, because Jackson thinks that he and Derek have a lot to talk about, and some private time will do them good.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me [on Tumblr](http://tryslora.tumblr.com). If you like my fic, you might also like my original work at [Welcome to PHU](http://welcometophu.tumblr.com).


End file.
